Effect Of Food Stimulus Size On Executive Function In Obese Children

In recent years,the trend of simple obesity in children has increased rapidly.Children’s simple obesity is considered to be due to children ’s long-term intake of excessive energy,resulting in excessive accumulation of fat in the body,without sufficient energy consumption.Executive functions are high-level cognitive skills that enable a person to self-regulate or maintain goal-oriented behavior by adjusting behavior according to current conditions.The executive function continues to develop with the growth of children’s age.When the individual is about one year old,the development of executive function is still relatively weak,but slowly the prefrontal lobe of the brain begins to develop,and executive function continues to be enhanced.Moreover,the school age is the golden period of executive function development for children.Studies have shown that there is a close relationship between executive function and children ’s body mass index.The higher the body mass index,the worse the executive function,which will lead to slow response,slow thinking,poor attention,and psychological problems,such as depression,inferiority,and poor social adaptability.In this study,the Hanoi Tower experimental paradigm was used to measure children ’s cold executive function,and the hot executive function was based on the delay of gratification task.Two studies were designed with school-age children as the research object.In study 1,the influence of different food stimulus amounts on the cold executive function of 36 obese children and normal children was explored.The two-factor experiment design of 2(BMI type: obese/normal)×2(experimental condition: less food/more food)was adopted.The dependent variable is the time spent on the Hanoi Tower task.The results showed that obese children spent more time than normal children in the context of less food stimulation;in the situation of more food stimulation,the cold executive function of obese children was improved,and there was no significant difference in time consumption between obese children and normal children.In study 2,the influence of different food stimulus amounts on the thermal executive function of 37 obese children and normal children was explored.The two-factor experimental design of 2(BMI type: obese/normal)×2(experimental condition: less food/more food)was adopted.The dependent variable is the actual waiting time of the delayed gratification task.The results showed that obese children were more likely to choose instant gratification and were reluctant to wait for the main trial to return when the amount of food stimulation was small.When the amount of food stimulation is high,obese children are more willing to wait for more time to get more food rewards.Based on the above research results,the following conclusions can be drawn :(1)The more food rewards,the more help to improve the executive function of obese children;(2)In the situation of less food stimulation,the cold and hot executive function of obese children is not as good as that of normal-weight children;(3)In the context of high food stimulation,there was no difference in the performance of obese children and normal children in cold executive function and tower of hanoi tasks;(4)In the context of high food stimulation,obese children performed better than normal children in hot executive function and delayed gratification tasks.